


to think that we could stay the same

by marinersapptcomplex



Category: Elite (TV)
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Character Study, F/M, Suicidal Thoughts, guzman deserves better than lu, i just want them all to be happy please, its sad
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-03
Updated: 2019-02-03
Packaged: 2019-10-21 22:09:54
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,494
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17650811
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/marinersapptcomplex/pseuds/marinersapptcomplex
Summary: So this is grief.





	to think that we could stay the same

**Author's Note:**

> i wrote this a while ago but my love for nadia and guzman is never ending like why can't they just be HAPPY

_ Drift to me, always _

_ A candid yellow colour _

_ You, paralysed. _

 

_ I walked that street twice,  _

_ once as the betrayer and  _

_ once as the betrayed.  _

 

Guzman writes poems. Or, he writes haikus. Always finds himself waking up at 2am and scrambling for a pen in the darkness. Ink on his hands, on his face, sometimes on his ankles. The words come like thunderstorms, so quick so quick, all at once, too fast and too much. 

 

He writes one for Marina’s eulogy. All brave and boyish, standing tall, hands shaking with that paper in his hands, trying to get the words out. Everyone staring back at him: overcome. He’s never seen people cry like that before; it’s the type of crying where the muscles in your face go loose, your jaw goes slack, your eyes screw shut. 

 

In the months after Marina’s death, he didn’t do much of anything. The summer days were long, always filled with time to think, time to mull over all he had said and done. He spent most of the summer sleeping, the other half drinking. 

 

Guzman does not understand much of anything anymore. The way he looks at things now - noticing everything, and yet saying nothing. Sometimes he wakes up from nightmares, awful ones, filled with the horrors of his sister's death and thinks,  _ so this is grief.  _

 

He sleeps with Lu, hating and loving it, always swearing he’ll do the right thing eventually. Always making promises he can’t keep. He cares less and less, just smiles and nods gratefully whenever she trails him around like a trophy. He should know better, but he doesn’t. Not really. 

 

Samuel runs away in the spring, he leaves a letter on Guzman’s doorstep. Inside:  _ I hope you can find the time to forgive me. I hope things change.  _ Guzman secretly hopes the same. 

 

On his worst days, the very worst, the days where he can’t really breathe and Marina’s ghost consumes him whole, he visits Nadia’s shop. He never goes in, he can’t. That’s the only promise he can’t bring himself to break. And besides, Nadia’s doing better than ever before. She’s making more friends, getting her work done, enjoying herself. 

 

So, Guzman waits outside, catching glimpses, very brief ones. Snapshots of Nadia smiling, laughing with her brother, biting pens and biting nails. He leaves before he can ever work up the courage to go inside. 

 

He meets with Anders, more than once a week, sometimes Omar comes. Sometimes he doesn’t. They get high, pass out laughing and dribbling and spitting to the tune of traffic. They pretend to not care, it's the same tough-boy facade the three of them share. Unwilling, always. 

 

Guzman writes by his pool, smoking now, mouth tasting of blood and snow. He pictures Nadia’s palm in his, almost smiles, almost laughs, almost fucking cries. He has to close his eyes. 

 

Pen on paper, scribbling:  _ ten-thirty pm, tomato-faced and hungry. i wasted my summer looking for something new, something to save me. spring now, how barren we must look from a distance.  _

 

He ponders it for a moment, thinking, then suddenly crossing it out with a strike of his ball-point pen. 

 

In class, his new teacher, the one that replaced Martin, teaches them about dead language. Nadia raises her hand, very simply says, “ Isn’t it true there are over 2,500 ancient languages that are already extinct?”

 

Guzman thinks about that for a very long time afterwards. It chases him on the drive home from Las Encinas, circles round his mind endlessly. He wonders, how is it that two thousand languages have faded from civilisation but he still can’t find the right words to say out loud. 

 

On the back of his hand, smudged in blue:  _ does time heal all wounds? are we all creatures of habit? _

 

Each night he returns home it feels as if Marina has died all over again. His mother dreams of another child. His father snorts coke in private bedrooms. Guzman writes and smokes, wanting to cry, somehow unable to. His spirit crushed like a mint leaf in a margarita glass.

 

Out by the bench, in the ‘bad side of town’, earphones in, eyes closed again.  The sound of his blood thrumming through his veins. He aches for his sister. He aches for the mess left behind. He aches for Nadia. He aches and he aches and he aches.

 

Milk-blue light seeps in from the moon above and casts his face in a strange, fluorescent glow. He lets out a staggered breath, swallows the cold air down. Up ahead, the familiar silhouette of a femininity. A girl looking very lost and a lot sad. Beyond her brown eyes, a chasm deep enough for you to fall and break your limbs. A phantom in the form of a girl he used to once know. 

 

“Nadia?” He speaks without even thinking. 

 

She wavers for a moment, it looks as if she might turn away from him entirely. Guzman waits, something inside him breaking. 

 

“I saw you from inside the shop.” 

 

Guzman stays still, one earphone in, the other out. There is no way to make this better. A long pause; a jilted gasp from both their mouths; the taste of soil on his tongue. The fleeting sense of being suffocated underneath the ocean.

 

“Oh,” is all he can say in response. 

 

“Will you finally talk to me now?” She crosses her arms, looks away. 

 

The only thing he asks is, “Do we have to do this now?”

 

Her mouth wobbles, momentarily, and then she’s all stone-faced and serious. Reminds him of the times before, when he used to study every little beautiful thing that Nadia did. Now the memories of them together are a torment to him, not a consolation. 

 

“If not now, then when?” 

 

“Always outsmarting me, aren’t you?” He smiles, uneasy. “Even when I’m at my lowest.”

 

“Is that what you think I’m doing? Outsmarting you?” 

 

“Nadia, please…” his voice is gritty, like glass and rusty nails, grinding down down down on Nadia’s heart. “Can’t we just be civil?”

 

The both of them lower their heads, silently dreaming, wandering who will speak next, or if anyone will even speak at all. 

 

“I was there for you, Guzman.” She breathes, all at once, suddenly. “Where were you?”

 

“I don’t know,” he says quietly after a moment. “I’m sorry.”

 

Avoiding Nadia is  a losing battle, and he knows that, perhaps he’s known all along. He studies her shadow for a moment, her shoulders blotting out the orange streetlight from behind her. The buttery look of damnation inside her eyes. 

 

Nadia lets out a soft sigh, slowly comes toward Guzman and takes a seat next to him. Guzman looks down at her hands, they’re raw-bitten and shaking. He tries to look away but can’t. She gravitates her eyes to his, catches glimpse of the dark circles. 

 

“I made a promise to your father, Nadia.” Guzman insists. “I promised to stay away from you.”

 

He doesn’t know where to put his hands, or where to look, or how to speak. Everything is so out of place. 

 

“Forget your promises!” Nadia says sharply, turns to face him. Her face takes on light from the moon. “Forget my father… This is about you.”

 

“This has nothing to do with me.” He curls his fists, feels the phantom sting of every punch and hit he’s taken and given. 

 

Nadia reaches her hand out, rests it gently on his face. She tries to smile, but something stops her, a tear escapes her eye. 

 

“You walk around school like a ghost, it’s like you’re not even here anymore, like you don’t want to be here.” She sniffs. “Don’t you see how you’re exhausting yourself?”

 

He wants to cry. He wants to scream. Wants to run away and walk into busy traffic on the freeway. 

 

“Will you not let me help you?” 

 

He can’t look away from her. Guzman wants to believe that he and Nadia will leave this place and conquer the world and all its pains with giddy smiles on both their dopey faces. He wants to live in that naive illusion. So, so desperately. 

 

“What if I can’t be helped?” His voice breaks, like the static echo of thunder. The words are fading away, getting caught between his solar plexus and throat. “What if I feel like this forever and ever, Nadia? What if there’s no end to all this chaos?”

 

“The pain will pass away, Guzman. I promise.” She strokes her thumb over the freckles on his cheeks, relishes in the touch they share, tries not to cry all over again. “And even if it doesn’t, I will be here.”

 

On that splintered bench, in the bad side of town, Nadia holds his hand and lets him cry. And later on that night, Guzman writes one last haiku and goes to sleep dreaming of her. 

 

_ These are the moments.  _

_ Yes. Right here and right now. Yes.  _

_ These are the moments. _

  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  



End file.
